Behind Jasco’s odd turn backtracking on its dividend

In a highly unusual turn of events Jasco Electronics has withdrawn a full-year dividend it had previously declared. On September 27 Jasco, an investment holding company for a group of firms in the telecommunications and manufacturing sector, declared a 1c per share dividend in the results for the year to June 30.
The company retracted the results on October 1 and asked the JSE to suspend its shares after it had erroneously referred to provisional results as “audited”. According to a timeline released with the previous results, the dividend would have been paid on October 22.
In the retracted results Jasco said the dividend had been paid out of income reserves. But it changed its tune on Monday in the restated financials saying “due to earnings loss position of the group, the board deemed it prudent not to declare a dividend this year”. “As we started working with new external auditors, PwC Inc, this year, certain accounting changes were required, including applying a different IFRS ...

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